


Rain

by atheilen



Category: The Fionavar Tapestry - Guy Gavriel Kay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheilen/pseuds/atheilen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the rain comes, Paul remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Just something for your stocking. Hope you like!
> 
> Written for Kristin

 

 

When the rain comes, he thinks of them.

Most of the time, he is content to be Pwyll Twiceborn, newly come to Fionavar. Or not even that--just Pwyll the Stranger, Jaelle's husband and the father of Jennifer--Little Jen, they call her, not Guinevere the Queen--, welcome in the court of King Aileron. But then the rain comes, and his shoulders begin to ache with old, remembered wounds, and Paul remembers that he is the Arrow of the God.

Paul remembers them all, all of them who died and are gone from him--and with Kim and Dave it was like a death, for there will never be another crossing between those worlds, not one that bears them back to him, or that takes him back to the world of his birth. There will not even be the consolations one expects to have with friends one will never see again: letters, Christmas cards, school pictures of unfamiliar children, to be hung on the walls out of a sense of duty. Here in Fionavar it is messengers, messengers who ride in and stay, sometimes for several weeks, giving you scraps of news as it occurs to them.

He thinks of them all, gone from him now, the only friends he has ever really had--and despite the fact that he and Jaelle each gave up everything for the other, love each other desperately, and are raising a child together, they still cannot quite be called friends--and the salt of his tears mixes with the rain. Most of all he misses Kevin, gift of a goddess, the Beloved. When Kevin was alive, Paul had always been a bit jealous of Kevin's capacity to be loved. Now it seems merely true, and right that it should have been so. Kevin had been a gift, and all Dana's gifts, as Jaelle reminded him frequently, were double-edged. He remembers Rachel, too, first and most desperate love, and something in the rain reminds him of the haunting strings of a cello.

He doesn't resent her anymore for saying he was cold, that he couldn't give her what he needed. She had been right--he couldn't. He hadn't grown into what he was meant to be yet, none of them had. And he never would have if she had not died, and he had not come to the Summer Tree in place of Ailell dan Art.

And Rachel had never gotten the chance. That was the only thing that still hurt: not the guilt, not the resentment. Just that, that she had not lived to grow into the life she was meant for. Kevin, for all Paul's grief and pain at the loss, had at least had that. His death had been the perfect culmination of his life. Rachel's had just ended, and that is the reason he cries.

And then the rain dies and Little Jen runs out to play in the mud, and Pwyll the Stranger lifts his daughter up and twirls her around as she shrieks with joy. She runs about in the mud and he knows Jaelle will kill him for this, but they live in a world with spring, and what else is spring for?

Paul has not heard a cello since he came to Fionavar. It is not an instrument they have here. He doesn't miss it. But he thinks that perhaps, if he were to hear one again, he would not weep. 

 


End file.
